The Missing Half: Full Book Quiz
Plot and Sequence Questions (1–8)
1. What is the setting of the Prologue?
A) Mishawaka, Indiana
B) A swamp at night
C) Funland amusement park
D) A lake house
2. In what year does Chapter One take place? (Short answer)
3. What does Jenna first claim to have found to convince Nic to talk?
A) A police report
B) A diary
C) A photograph
D) A witness
4. What do Nic and Jenna discover about the locations where Jules and Kasey worked? (Short answer)
5. Who does Steve McLean identify as having hated Kasey?
A) Brad Andrews
B) Sandy Andrews
C) Lauren Tate
D) Jenna Connor
6. What item in Kasey’s car reveals a mileage discrepancy? (Short answer)
7. What does Sandy reveal about Kasey’s visit the night she disappeared?
A) Kasey came to see Brad
B) Kasey came to see Sandy
C) Kasey came to blackmail Brad
D) Kasey came to return a CD
8. What shocking discovery ends Chapter Thirty-Eight? (Short answer)
Character Motivation Questions (9–13)
9. Why does Nic initially refuse to talk to Jenna?
A) She is angry at reporters
B) She is afraid of the truth
C) She is too drunk
D) She doesn’t believe Jenna
10. Why does Jenna lie about the diary?
A) To gain Nic’s trust
B) To sell a story
C) To protect her mother
D) To trick Nic into confessing
11. Why does Kasey fake her own disappearance? (Short answer)
12. Why does Jenna confront Kasey with a gun in the final chapters?
A) To arrest her
B) To force a confession for Jules’s murder
C) To scare her into leaving town
D) To take revenge on McLean
13. Why does Nic decide to break into Jenna’s house? (Short answer)
Theme and Symbol Questions (14–17)
14. What does the swamp symbolize in the novel?
A) New beginnings
B) Hidden secrets and burial of truth
C) Danger from strangers
D) Escape
15. What does the repeated lyric “We are not two, we are one” from a CD represent? (Short answer)
16. How does the media’s treatment of Kasey and Jules highlight a theme?
A) The power of social media
B) Class and beauty privilege in victim reporting
C) The unreliability of news
D) The importance of community
17. What does the hammer Nic uses symbolize? (Short answer)
Synthesis Questions (18–20)
18. How does the novel use the concept of “the missing half” to comment on identity? (Short answer)
19. Compare the investigative methods of Nic and Jenna. How do their approaches reflect their personalities? (Short answer)
20. In the final chapter, the narrator wonders “which sisters truly survived.” What does this question mean in the context of the story? (Short answer)
Answer Key
1. B) A swamp at night — The Prologue opens with a girl fleeing through a swamp at night, establishing immediate danger and the swamp as a key setting.
2. 2019 — Chapter One specifies that Nicole Monroe works at Funland in Mishawaka, Indiana, in 2019.
3. B) A diary — Jenna claims she found Jules’s diary containing information the police missed, though she later admits the diary was invented.
4. They share a wall — Jules worked at Famous Jake’s (later Mesquite Barbecue), and Kasey worked at Rosie’s Records; the two businesses share a physical wall.
5. C) Lauren Tate — Steve McLean tells Nic and Jenna that Lauren (Kasey’s best friend) hated Kasey, shifting suspicion toward Kasey’s inner circle.
6. A mix CD with the lyric “We are not two, we are one” — The CD binder in Kasey’s car contains a mix with that lyric, and the mileage on her car shows over 500 extra miles, indicating secret trips.
7. B) Kasey came to see Sandy — Sandy reveals that Kasey did not visit Brad that night; she came to Sandy, shattering Nic’s assumption.
8. The narrator hears her sister Kasey’s voice — After following Jenna to a garage apartment, the narrator realizes Kasey is alive.
9. A) She is angry at reporters — Nic assumes the woman approaching her is a reporter and leaves abruptly, showing her distrust and desire to avoid the past.
10. A) To gain Nic’s trust — Jenna admits she invented the diary because she needed Nic to open up about Kasey; her mother was dying and she was desperate for answers.
11. To protect Nic from being discovered as the driver who killed Jules — Kasey staged her disappearance to draw suspicion away from Nic, whom she believed accidentally hit Jules with her car.
12. B) To force a confession for Jules’s murder — Jenna has deduced that Kasey was involved in Jules’s death and demands she admit it, intending to kill her in revenge.
13. She suspects Jenna has been lying and wants to examine the research wall — After learning Jenna’s mother’s cancer is in remission, Nic realizes Jenna deceived her and breaks in to find evidence.
14. B) Hidden secrets and burial of truth — The swamp is where Jules’s body was hidden and later where Jenna’s body is sunk, symbolizing the burial of painful truths.
15. The sister bond and the idea that sisters are two halves of a whole — The lyric echoes the poem at the end, reinforcing the theme that each sister is incomplete without the other.
16. B) Class and beauty privilege in victim reporting — Kasey, conventionally attractive, received more news coverage and was both idealized and slut-shamed; Jules, less privileged, was largely ignored.
17. Violence as a last resort and the burden of protection — Nic uses the hammer to kill Jenna in order to save Kasey, showing the extreme lengths she goes to for sisterly love.
18. The title reflects the central theme: each protagonist feels like half a person without her sister. Both Nic and Jenna’s identities are defined by their missing siblings, and the poem about two halves of a soul underscores that identity is intertwined with the sister relationship.
19. Nic’s method is impulsive and emotionally driven—she relies on memory, confrontations, and gut feelings. Jenna is methodical and secretive, building a research wall and using deception. Nic’s guilt and avoidance shape her haphazard approach; Jenna’s control and grief lead her to manipulate and plan. Their conflicting styles both advance and endanger the investigation.
20. The question asks whether survival is physical or moral. Nic and Kasey survive physically but are burdened by guilt and complicity in covering up Jules’s death. Jenna and Jules are dead, but their bond is eternal in the swamp. The line suggests that the “right” sisters may not have survived—those who lived did so through lies and violence, while the dead remain pure in their sisterly connection.
For more on the story, see the book overview, questions and answers, and the ending explained.